The Battle of Badon Hill (Celtic name MynyddBaddon is an obscure battle which probably took place in
what is now England sometime in the early 6th Century.

It was fought
between the Celts led by a charismatic war leader that may have been King
Arthur and the invading Saxons led by the warrior King Aelle
who took Pevensey from the Celts in 491 and went on
to found the South Saxon Kingdom which would now correspond to the English
county of Sussex.

Nennius writing circa
800 CE records:-

The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and
on which fell 960 men from one charge by Arthur; and no-one struck them struck
them down save Arthur himself.

Gildas writing circa† 540 CE also
mentions the battle and says that it was a siege which indicates a fortified
hill.

†

The exact
location of the battlefield is not known, but it may have been near Badbury in Wiltshire,. There is an
ancient iron age earthwork fort now called LiddingtonCastle
on a hilltop, just above the prehistoric road into Wiltshire. Badbury is just south of Swindon and close to where the A346 meets the M4 at
junction 15

While the
details of the battle are largely lost, historical evidence indicates that,
when Aelle led a Saxon army west from his kindgom on a raid into Celtic held territory, he was
ambushed by Arthur's smaller force.

When Arthur's
troops sprang their ambush on the Saxon army, they pulled into a rough shieldwall along the roadway and fought desperately until
sundown, when Aelle withdrew his battered troops to a
nearby hilltop under cover of darkness.

†

In the
morning, Arthur's troops were rested and had eaten. By contrast, the Saxons had
spent the night on a steep, exposed hilltop without water or firewood. Rather
than starve out the trapped Saxons, Arthur apparently chose to sweep them off
the hilltop. At first light, the Britons started a series of charges up the
hill.

Both sides
engaged in a fierce battle for most of the second day, with the Celts charging
up the steep hill and the Saxons countercharging down it. However, the battle
ended near sundown when Arthur personally led a cavalry charge up the steep
slope and broke the Saxon shieldwall, then rode down
the fleeing Saxons until it was too dark to continue.

The Battle of Badon Hill is
relatively unknown, but it may have held up the Saxon advance into the Celtic
kingdoms by a generation.

Other proposed sites for the Battle
of Badon Hill are the Badon
Hill in Linlithgow,
Scotland,
Lansdowne near Bath,
England
and The Roman fort at Ribchester
in Lancashire,
England.